Badwater (7 page)

eleven

A
t 9:00
A
.
M
., four orange-clad inmates shuffled into the courtroom through a back door next to the judge’s bench. The deputy leading this mini chain-gang directed them to seats in the front of the jury box. Jonah entered last, shackled like the others by his wrists to the steel cord that connected all four inmates. He took one look around the packed courtroom then dropped his eyes to the rail before him. Without his spiked hair and facial jewelry, and without his tattoos displayed, he looked not much more than a teenager.

A rumble of interest rose up from the gallery. I couldn’t catch complete sentences, but the general tone seemed to be a sense of satisfaction over the bruises swelling Jonah’s face. Mr. Wallis, the dead boy’s father, was not there, but feisty little Mr. Mann was.

One gaze was directed at me rather than Jonah. It came from the rear corner of the courtroom, far away from where I leaned against the wall next to the prosecution table. But even from the distance of thirty feet, I could feel its heat. Mattie Freda was huddled alone there, her pale skin turning an angry pink from having seen Jonah’s battered face.

I considered walking through the low swinging doors dividing the well of the court from the gallery, excusing my way down the last aisle, and attempting to make an explanation. To tell her what had happened. That I wasn’t responsible. The look on her face told me she would need some convincing.

But I didn’t move. I was responsible, in a way, and I didn’t want to draw attention to her like that. Plus, having already seen how high-strung she could be, I didn’t want to risk another scene with her. Instead I looked away and watched the county’s public defender shove up from his table and hike across the well to stand before the prisoners. He was a fat man, dressed slobbishly except for well-styled silver hair.

I was close enough to hear what he said to them in a low voice.

“Gentlemen, I’m Jake Henning, the public defender in this county. I’m probably going to be serving as the attorney for most of you. None of you, frankly, looks like you got a pot to piss in, much less the cash to hire an attorney of your own. Anyway, the judge is going to tell you why you got yourselves hauled in here. He’s going to tell you what rights you have, and ask you if you want to talk to an attorney. Provided you qualify, you can have me represent you on the county’s dime, and I’ll probably be able to work out some kind of deal with the county attorney.”

Then he pointed to Jonah.

“Excepting you,” he said. “You’re Jonah Strasburg, right?”

Jonah nodded, his eyes still down on the rail.

“Yeah.”

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, son.”

Jonah looked up.

The lawyer leaned in close to him, but when he spoke his voice was loud enough to be heard in the gallery.

“I’m not going to represent you, whether you qualify or not. Understand? I’ve got a conflict that’s going to prevent that.”

“A conflict?” Jonah asked softly.

“That boy you killed—excuse me, allegedly killed—he was my wife’s cousin’s son. So I’m not going to have anything to do with you or your case except to hang around here as a spectator. And to do some serious celebrating when they convict your sorry butt. Now, I’ve already talked to the judge, and he’s going to find some other fool to take your case. If the poor sucker’s willing, he might come see you next week.”

The fat lawyer gave Jonah a long, contemptuous look then stalked back to the defense table. Several men in the gallery gave him clenched-jaw nods, approvingly.

Luke, who had come into the courtroom just before this and was arranging papers on the prosecution table, motioned for me to bend over.

He whispered, “Don’t think old Jake’s all that noble. He’s just running for my job next term. Wants to show everyone he can be a hard-ass even when he’s on D.”

I looked at Jonah again, expecting to see him looking down again, his expression as hangdog as it had been last night. I was surprised to see him glaring at the defense attorney, his damaged face as hard as the faces of the men and women in the gallery.

Good for you,
I thought.
Being mad beats being sad.

An elderly woman came in from the door behind the judge’s bench. She called, “All rise!”

There was a rustle of clothes, a rattling of chains, and the stomping of boots as everyone complied. The judge then entered through the same door. He was old, too—a shrunken, bent figure with flapping wisps of white hair and a robe that billowed around him as he marched to his chair. He glared at all of us, lingering for a long moment on me and Luke. I wondered what I had done. Maybe he’d somehow heard about the ruckus in the jail.

The judge didn’t sit right away, or allow us to sit either, with the customary muttering of “Be seated.” Instead he issued a warning in an angry voice.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I understand why so many of you are here. I empathize with you, too. But this is a court of justice, not public opinion.” He glanced meaningfully at Luke and me again, then continued, “I won’t tolerate any outbursts, and there’s going to be no screwing around. That includes the parties to these cases. Anyone makes so much as a peep without my permission and I’m going to clear the room. Do we understand each other?”

No one made a sound.

“Then please sit down.”

The judge’s threats seemed to me as inappropriate as the defense lawyer’s comments to Jonah. No one had said anything. If there’d been a hint of a coming outburst, I hadn’t seen it. And I wondered about the reason for the stink eye directed at Luke and me.

I sat down next to the county attorney, as uncomfortable in my role as advisory witness as I was in my navy suit. After what had happened last night, I’d gotten dressed at my camp instead of coming in to shower in the jail and adjacent deputies’ locker room. It felt a little weird to be dressing so formally in an isolated canyon thirty miles from town. The temperature was only a little above freezing when I splashed myself clean in the river, and I still had a slight headache from dunking my head.

One by one Jonah’s fellow inmates were called to stand at the podium between the prosecution and defense tables. The judge recited a list of their rights, asking if they understood after each statement. They would answer “Yes” or “
Sí
,” although even I, with eight years of experience in law enforcement and a master’s degree in criminal justice, couldn’t fully comprehend all the nuances that went along with each constitutionally protected right. Luke then read the charges against them and the potential penalties if convicted. The judge asked if the inmates wanted to consult a lawyer before entering a plea. All did, and all indicated that they would like to have the county pay their legal costs. Jake Henning, the PD with the nice head of hair, stood and gave each man a form and a business card. I grew close to drifting off.

“Jonah Strasburg.”

He stood as the guards unhooked him from the chain. Unlike the other prisoners, he remained handcuffed. Everyone watched him stumble as he came out of the box, then he had to cross the well under the weight of all those hostile eyes. I felt even sorrier for him than I had before. He glanced at me, but I couldn’t read what was in his gaze. Probably wanting to ask me to save him again, like I had last night. But I stayed stone-faced, sitting next to the prosecutor. Like a good cop.

Luke climbed to his feet.

“Luke Endow. For the People,” he announced for the spectators and the tape recorder.

His voice was stiffer, more formal, than it had been when he’d entered his appearance on the other cases called that morning. He slapped a document on the podium in front of Jonah, then studied the young man’s face for a moment. When he turned back to me, Luke’s own face was grave but his eyes seemed to be twinkling with pleasure. I was beginning to understand why. With a disputed election coming up, this case would keep him in the spotlight. I cynically assumed that the public defender, Luke’s opponent, with his tenuous familial connection to the boy who’d died, had recused himself so as not to be sharing it, but for the wrong side. Jonah was going to be the main course in this election meal.

I really didn’t want to be here. For the first time in a long time, I wanted to be performing my absolutely useless duty of tramping through the woods, scoping meth labs. This wasn’t an arraignment but a campaign event.

“As you can see from the papers before you,” the judge said, “you are charged with a felony. That means it is a crime for which, if convicted, you could be sentenced to more than a year in prison.”

He proceeded to read Jonah his rights. Any statement he made could be used against him. He had a right to an attorney even if he couldn’t afford one. Any plea he made must be voluntary. He had a right to a jury trial. And so on, all the things anyone who watches TV is aware of. Then, in a voice that seemed equally resigned and disgusted, he finally told Jonah the nature of the charges against him.

“The crime you are charged with having committed on Thursday, the seventeenth of June, in Colter County, Wyoming, is the crime of murder in the first degree.”

My head snapped toward Luke, who was sitting next to me. He was staring down at his papers, a faint grin on his mouth.

“You got to be kidding me,” I started to whisper. Now I knew why the judge was so pissed.

Luke put a finger to his lips.

“For you to be found guilty of this crime, it must be proven that, after deliberation and with the intent to cause the death of a person other than yourself, you caused the death of the person. Or it may be proven that, under circumstances evidencing an attitude of universal malice manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life generally, you knowingly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death to a person, or persons, other than yourself, and thereby caused the death of another, namely Cody Wallis, age ten.”

There was a rumble from the gallery, and an angry shifting of boots. The judge glared and raised his gavel—almost as if he might throw it—but didn’t strike. The gesture was enough. The noises subsided. I expected that if he were to throw it, it would be toward Luke and me. The judge clearly knew the first-degree murder charge was politically motivated and didn’t like it.

I turned and looked back at the citizens. The concentrated gazes of all but Mattie were trying to light Jonah’s back on fire.

I’d once been in a similar courtroom where such mass vengeance had been directed my way. Only it wasn’t a criminal courtroom—it had been civil. And the supposed “victims” hadn’t been children. But the faces had hated me just as much. One of them belonged to the prick of a reporter who had dreamed up the nickname QuickDraw.

Mattie was the only one deviating from the hatred directed at Jonah. Her hatred was still directed at me, intensified now. I quickly turned away again because Mattie obviously wanted to see me spark up.

Instead I watched Jonah, feeling real sympathy for him now. Shit, I’d been there. Almost—my life hadn’t been at stake, only my job and reputation. Jonah seemed to be bearing up to the higher stakes as well as could be expected. He was standing rigid and pale, his fists clenched while his hands were still cuffed. But I suspected the muscular contraction was due to an attempt to keep from fainting rather than defiance. The breeze from an open door might knock the kid over.

For Luke, the game was high-stakes poker. For Jonah, it was Russian roulette.

The judge read on, outlining all the lesser included offenses Endow had thrown into the charging document just to make sure something heavy and hard would stick. Murder in the second degree. Manslaughter. Assault. Menacing. Criminally negligent homicide. He’d really piled it on. The only thing lacking from the Wyoming statute book was “sheepherder abandoning his flock.” The stacking of charges was usually intended to intimidate the defendant into accepting a plea.

“Now, I’m not going to ask you to make a plea at this time,” the judge said. “I’m going to wait until you’ve had a chance to talk to counsel. As I said earlier, if you can’t afford to hire your own, the court will provide one to you. But at this point I need to ask you if you have an attorney, or anticipate hiring your own, because our public defender has recused himself from this case.”

Jesus,
I thought,
I shouldn’t have arrested him. I should have given him a shove and shouted for him to run!

Jonah cleared his throat, the microphone on the podium picking it up. Then he cleared his throat again.

“Um,” he said in a quiet voice, “I, um, don’t think I can afford to hire an attorney.”

“Then the court will appoint you one. I’m going to reschedule this hearing for five days from now.”

The judge abruptly stood and concluded the hearing by leaving the room. No one moved for a moment, then the deputies grabbed Jonah and led him back to the jury box. The prisoners were rehooked to the chain and pulled out, Jonah leading this time. At the rear door, just before disappearing, Jonah looked back. His eyes sought out Mattie in the far corner. The slack, numb expression on his face was heartbreaking.

twelve

L
uke shuffled papers while the courtroom emptied. Occasionally someone leaned over the rail and clapped his shoulder. Luke would turn, and the man or woman would say “You get him, Luke,” or “You make him pay for what he did to our Cody,” or, once, “Hang him high, Luke. Hang him high.”

The county attorney would nod solemnly by way of reply and go back to shuffling, the same surreptitious gleam in his eye. I suspected he was about as sorry over the boy’s death as he would have been if he’d won the lottery. It was manna from heaven for a politician, especially a struggling one. Everyone would be talking about how tough he was on crime, about how hard he went after an outsider who had the audacity to kill a local child. I stayed in my seat even though the urge was strong to get away from him.

I really hated politics and the way it could pervert justice.

But I stayed not only because it was my job but also because I owed it to Luke. He still had a limp from the bullet he’d taken for me. I wondered if the wound still pained him very much. I wondered, too, if the bullet might be the reason he’d gotten so damn fat. Not that he’d ever been skinny, but he was so fat now he’d probably die of a heart attack at an early age, and in a way, it might be my fault. But at least I couldn’t blame myself for the loss of his hair. It had already been thinning when we first met. I could still picture him as he’d been that day eight years ago—he’d been trying to infiltrate an Earth First! rally near Jackson Hole and was dressed as an over-the-top hippie from a quarter century earlier, complete with beads, bell-bottoms, and granny glasses. The idiotic outfit exposed him as a narc as fast as the obvious calculation in his eyes. I would learn over the months we spent together that he was far more effective at running CIs—confidential informants. Kicking their butts and always sending them in for more and more evidence. He was also known for protecting them from overly curious judges and defense attorneys, and for building rock-solid cases that the prosecutors would too often give away so they wouldn’t have to bother with another trial that would take time away from their fishing and hunting trips.

I had still been an FNG—a trainee—when he caught the bullet. I hadn’t even gone through the academy in Rock Springs yet. Luke was my partner and training officer. One night we were in the mountains outside Story, Wyoming, surveilling a house whose owner we intended to arrest. At 3:00
A
.
M
. a car finally drove up with our suspect inside. Luke covered me as I jogged up the driveway behind it, intending to be in the driver’s face as soon as he stepped out of the car. Only he somehow saw me in the red glow of his taillights. Without even stopping, he opened the driver’s door, twisted halfway out, and started shooting.

I dove into the trees on one side of the driveway. My desperate lunge for cover was so sudden and so spastic that Luke thought I’d been hit. He returned fire then yelled my name. Since our suspect was still sporadically firing back with vicious little small-caliber pops, I thought it wise not to answer and give away my position. Luke took my silence for mortal danger—he probably pictured me with blood spilling out of holes in my flesh. He charged out of the trees like a short, balding Rambo. He was emptying an entire fifteen-round clip as he ran in a weird sideways scuttle, trying to make himself a skinnier target, I guess, which might have been a good strategy if he weren’t already showing signs of his current chubbiness. The suspect somehow wasn’t shot, but his very last bullet struck Luke in the meat of one cheek and passed through both it and the other. It was lucky for him that he disabled Luke in this way. If he hadn’t, I had no doubt Luke would have killed him, whether the poor idiot who’d shot him had any more ammunition or not.

I was following the rules in those days, just as I was trying to now. I didn’t even take a cheap shot for my partner—not even a little kick to the groin of the man who’d tried to kill both of us—when I tackled the asshole as he tried to run from his car. Luke had given me shit about that for months.
Goddamnit, Burns, the fucker pops me and you cuff him like he’s your mom and take him in without a scratch while I’m lying there bleeding out of my ass
.

Things sure had changed. With me, at least.

The courtroom’s doors banged shut a last time and the room was silent.

“What did you think,
amigo
?” Luke asked, finally letting the grin lift up his jowls the way he’d been aching to all through the morning.

I thought it sucked.

But I forced myself to recite my mantra. Besides, it really wasn’t any of my business. I just gave him the facts and he made the charging decisions. That’s what good cops do. I couldn’t stay totally silent, though.

“I’m not sure I see the factual basis for murder, Luke. The intent element, I mean. I don’t think I put anything about that in my report.”

The smile dropped along with the jowls.

“What are you talking about, QuickDraw? You were there at the scene. You arrested the son of a bitch. He threw that kid off the cliff into the river.”

“But did he really intend for Cody to die?”

Luke drew back and studied me.

“Christ, have you gotten limp-wristed or something? Of course he intended for him to die. Strasburg had just come down the biggest, baddest rapids in the river and then he pushes that kid into the same water?”

The fact that it was downstream from the rapids didn’t register with him. He continued. “And you just saw our potential jury pool—do you think they’re going to believe it was an accident? They’ll buy extreme indifference, at the least.”

I shrugged. It was probably true. It depended on the abilities of the defense. Not, as justice should, on the actual facts.

Another smile crept onto Luke’s face, this one sly.

“Besides, this is just for openers. I’m not going to have to prove anything. You know the game, QuickDraw. That kid and whatever putz the judge rustles up to represent him will fall all over themselves to plead to any lesser I can name. They’ll take anything, anything at all, just so long as they don’t have to risk mandatory life under Murder One.”

I’d always hated plea bargains. It seemed to me that if you commit a crime, you should be convicted and sentenced for your actions. Not some other, sometimes unrelated, offense, just so the state didn’t have to go through the effort and uncertainties of an actual trial.

I wasn’t stupid, though—I understood that in a wildly overcrowded and underfunded judicial system, you can’t take everything to trial. And that each year lawmakers make it a thousand times worse by trying to look “tough on crime” and passing new laws and mandatory sentences. Deals had to be made—the system had long ago been overwhelmed. What I really objected to was the politicization of the process. Prosecutors were elected, and their first priority was always to stay in office. The pleas they offered—and the charges they filed and overfiled—were far too often based on that priority. A county attorney had to have a politician’s instinct for the sound bite and know who to hammer and who to soft-sell to keep the money and votes flowing.

It had little to do with justice. Less and less each year.

Luke chuckled.

“I bet they’ll be so scared of the murder charge they’ll jump for criminally negligent homicide and a ten-year minimum.”

“That’s what you’re going to offer?” I asked.

But Luke didn’t answer. We were interrupted by a voice from the back of what we’d assumed was an empty courtroom.

“You’re disgusting,” a voice said, not much louder than a whisper but with enough emotion behind it that it carried like a scream.

I turned around in my chair. Luke did, too. Mattie Freda was still huddled in the far corner, her black bangs above dark eyes looking as sharp as Mungo’s fangs. I noticed that she’d taken out the facial jewelry she’d worn on the river. Her blouse was some black, shiny material. If it weren’t for her dyed hair, she’d look almost respectable.

“Who the hell are you?” Luke demanded.

“Mattie . . .” I called to her.

“Don’t even fucking speak to me, you goddamn Nazi!”

With jerking movements, she grabbed her bag, lurched to her feet, and almost ran out of the room.

Luke chuckled.

“That’s the girlfriend? Bet she wouldn’t be too bad in the sack if you like a little strange. Looked like she has a body on her. Anyway, she’ll be fucking great if we ever get her on the witness stand. Piss off everyone in town with that attitude.”

I wanted to go after her but didn’t. I rationalized that it would be good to give her a little time to cool off. It was also true that I didn’t want to chase her down, apologizing, in front of Luke.

Instead I asked, “Did you hear how Strasburg got those bruises?”

Now he laughed. “Sounds like my old buddy Smit was angling for early release. He sure opened a can of whup-ass on Strasburg, all right. I didn’t think that big bastard would beat up anyone but his girlfriend—all we ever seem to get him on are piddling little DV charges, even though he’s the ringleader of half the tweakers in this county. But you’d better be watching your back when that boy gets out—he’ll probably try making another exception for you. I heard he had to get six stitches in his tongue after you zapped him.”

Then he turned serious. “By the way, I met with the sheriff about it before court this morning. He wasn’t too happy with you for stirring things up in his jail. He wants you to stay out of there, understand? Putting Strasburg in solitary will be a big drain on his resources, and if we piss the sheriff off too much he’s not going to endorse me when the campaigning starts.” He shook his head, remembering, and frowned at me. “No, he wasn’t happy at all.”

I said, “I wasn’t too happy that his deputies allowed our suspect to get the shit kicked out of him.”

“Come on, QuickDraw. What did you expect when you put him in that jail after he killed a local kid? In this town, there’s always going to be a little unofficial payback. Might even make him a little malleable, if you know what I mean, when it comes time to do a deal. After what I heard about you in Cheyenne, I’m surprised you’d be so squeamish about something like that.”

I decided to reason with him in a language he’d understand.

“Do you want him coming into court looking like a victim instead of a perp? Do you want him filing lawsuits against you, the sheriff, and the county for violating his civil rights?”

Luke considered it and scowled. “Yeah, I guess that’s right.” Then the scowl changed into a leer. “You know all about those kinds of lawsuits, don’t you, QuickDraw?”

I ignored the question and the old pain and anger that flared with the reference.

“I hear you’ve got some experience with other forms of retaliation, too,” Luke said. “Perpetrating it, I mean. I bet there’s some stuff nobody even knows about, right? Took you long enough to figure it out,
amigo
. But it’s the way the real world works.”

The pain and anger turned suddenly to fear. I found myself staring into his piggish eyes, feeling my own eyes growing hard and sharp until he looked down at his papers.

What did he know?

He was just a small-town prosecutor and former Wyoming cop—he couldn’t possibly know anything about a botched FBI operation, my brother’s “accident,” or my role in the disappearance of the Mexican drug lord who’d been responsible for it all. He couldn’t know. McGee just wouldn’t betray me like that. And no one else knew, or at least no one had any evidence.

But for a moment my world was thrown off-kilter, and I could see myself standing in a moonless Baja desert, a wounded man crawling at my feet, the boom and kick of the shotgun in my hands, and the splash of hot blood on my bare legs. I remembered feeling no pity, no remorse. And, sick as it was, I still felt none.

Luke was shuffling his papers a final time, this time organizing them into a neat pile and stuffing them in his briefcase. He stood and hefted the case.

“I want you to interview those kids today, okay?”

“Who?” I asked after a pause.

“The Manns. Wake up. And quit giving me those cold snake eyes.”